China is likely to return to buying large volumes of oil within weeks after selling down inventories during the peak of the Iran supply disruption, according to Mercuria. Marco Dunand, chief executive of the trading house, said at the FT Commodities Summit that China has been drawing from commercial stocks accumulated ahead of the crisis, effectively stepping back from the market as prices surged and Middle East flows tightened. That sell-off is a critical and possibly underappreciated part of the recent balance. China entered 2026 with a sizable…

Western mining companies and investors continue to flock to Kazakhstan in search of deals, drawn by the country’s abundance of minerals and its comparatively well-developed legal framework. But Astana, buoyed by Washington’s and Brussels’ increasing interest in critical minerals, has begun tinkering with the mining sector’s legal framework, making incremental edits to increase the state’s role and ensure the government gets a larger cut of the profits. Changes to the tax code and sub-soil use law enacted over the last…

Primary oil processing at Rosneft’s Novokuibyshevsk refinery has been halted. The outage, which began on April 18 after a Ukrainian drone strike, encompasses the first stage of crude processing at one of Russia’s refineries in the Samara region, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday. The outage follows attacks reported on Saturday by Samara region governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, who said the Novokuibyshevsk and Syzran refineries had been targeted. The Novokuibyshevsk plant is operated by Rosneft and processed 5.74 million metric tons…

While diplomatic efforts struggle to stabilize access to the Strait of Hormuz amid tensions between the United States and Iran, Eurasian trade is increasingly being redirected toward overland alternatives, with the Trans-Caspian Transport Route, also known as the Middle Corridor, emerging as a key diversification route in Eurasian logistics. The World Bank described the Middle Corridor back in 2023 as a strategically important but structurally constrained route. While geopolitical fragmentation, driven in part by Russia's war in Ukraine, has increased…

Primary oil processing at Rosneft’s Novokuibyshevsk refinery has been halted. The outage, which began on April 18 after a Ukrainian drone strike, encompasses the first stage of crude processing at one of Russia’s refineries in the Samara region, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday. The outage follows attacks reported on Saturday by Samara region governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, who said the Novokuibyshevsk and Syzran refineries had been targeted. The Novokuibyshevsk plant is operated by Rosneft and processed 5.74 million metric tons…

Norway kept petroleum production near peak levels in March 2026—but the more important signal for oil markets is that the country is now operating with virtually no spare capacity. At a time when global supply remains highly sensitive to geopolitical disruptions, one of the world’s most reliable non-OPEC producers has little left to give. According to preliminary figures from the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, total liquids production averaged around 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd) in March, including crude oil, NGLs, and condensate.…

Norway kept petroleum production near peak levels in March 2026—but the more important signal for oil markets is that the country is now operating with virtually no spare capacity. At a time when global supply remains highly sensitive to geopolitical disruptions, one of the world’s most reliable non-OPEC producers has little left to give. According to preliminary figures from the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, total liquids production averaged around 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd) in March, including crude oil, NGLs, and condensate.…

Norway kept petroleum production near peak levels in March 2026—but the more important signal for oil markets is that the country is now operating with virtually no spare capacity. At a time when global supply remains highly sensitive to geopolitical disruptions, one of the world’s most reliable non-OPEC producers has little left to give. According to preliminary figures from the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, total liquids production averaged around 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd) in March, including crude oil, NGLs, and condensate.…

U.S. intervention in Venezuela, with illegitimate President Nicolas Maduro snatched in a daring January 2026 night raid, opened the country's oil industry to foreign investment. While President Donald Trump is aggressively pushing for Big Oil to invest in Venezuela, energy majors are taking a more sober approach. Venezuela's heavily corroded oil infrastructure, responsible for a nationwide environmental catastrophe, will require tens of billions of dollars to remediate before production will rise significantly. This, along with an ecological crisis…

Oil markets are on edge as delayed U.S.-Iran talks and Trump’s warning on the ceasefire raise the risk of renewed conflict, with Brent crude potentially spiking back toward $100 per barrel. Oil Whiplash, Gas Freefall: LNG Shrugs Off Hormuz Chaos - Crude oil prices have spent most of March-April seesawing up and down, reacting to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts. Global LNG prices have been declining for the past four weeks, defying upward swings in other commodities. - Northeast Asia’s…

Environmental activists on Tuesday launched a new lawsuit against Shell in the Netherlands, demanding that the supermajor stop bringing new oil and gas fields on stream to avoid additional emissions. Friends of the Earth – the Netherlands, or Milieudefensie, delivered the summons to Shell on Tuesday, in the second such case against the oil and gas major in the country. In 2024, a Dutch court of appeal handed a victory to Shell in the first landmark climate case, overturning a lower court ruling that had obliged the supermajor to slash its…

A sustained $100-per-barrel oil price could unlock up to 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of additional crude supply across South America by the mid-2030s, according to new analysis by Rystad Energy. The finding comes as the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced a sharp upward revision in our forecasted average 2026 oil price, from $60 Brent per barrel in January to $89 per barrel today. At current production levels, government revenues across South America are expected to rise by approximately $43 billion this year alone relative…

An Iranian supertanker, which had delivered 2 million barrels of crude to a ship-to-ship transfer offshore Indonesia, is en route to return to Iran’s Kharg Island after entering the Strait of Hormuz through the U.S. blockade, TankerTrackers.com said on Tuesday. A very large crude carrier (VLCC) owned by the Iranian national company departed Iran in late March 2026 and traveled to the Riau Archipelago in Indonesia, where she transferred 2 million barrels of crude oil to another VLCC, according to vessel monitoring data by TankerTrackers.com.…

The Middle East war and the crisis at the Strait of Hormuz could redraw the global energy map as world’s most critical oil chokepoint is no longer seen as a reliable route for oil and gas supply, says Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA). The Iran war and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz have shown the world that the Strait has lost its status of a reliable energy export route, Birol told Turkish newspaper Dünya. As a result, the crisis could lead to the global energy flows being redrawn,…